I've had more lives than a bag of cats... here's a few stories about that. My three basic theories of writing are: 1. all you need is something to say and a way to say it. 2. the easiest path to good prose is to live an interesting life and write it down. 3. All writing should work equally well as spoken word and as words on the page.

When I was a poet, about once a week somebody would tell me that one
of my poems had "changed their life." Seriously, people really said
that. So, I'd suggest they buy one of my books and they'd kind of
mumble and sidle away. Apparently I hadn't changed their life enough. I told that story to my good friend Austin Kleon and he drew the cartoon above. (The book in my story was actually only 6 bucks).

My three theories of writing from that time are:

All you need is something to say and a way to say it.

The easiest path to good prose is to live an interesting life and write it down.

All writing should work equally well as spoken word and as words on the page.

I still stand by these rules although it turned out that the flaw with number two is: if you are living an interesting life, you have no time to write. If you're writing, your life isn't very interesting from an outside view.

Eventually, I discovered that it's a lot easier to get paid for making art than poems, so that's what I do now. I miss writing, and the simpler lifestyle of being a poet, but I don't really miss how brutally solitary I had to be to focus on writing.

Poetry Collections

In spring of 1997 my friend Johnny Berst sent me a deeply poetic,
apocalyptic, cryptic
postcard out of the blue. I hadn't heard from him in years, but
responded in kind… before we knew it, we were essentially writing a
collaborative book together through the mail. All told, there were
somewhere around 2000 postcards before it was over. I really think the
cards contain some of the best work either of us ever did. Here's my
favorite 40 cards

The 36 poems in this collection work best aloud. They were written for both performance and the page, as scores for spoken word. The poems are roughly chronological, and span from the late 80s to the late 90s.

This book takes its title from a remark my friend Jeff Monseau made
about the punitively lengthy letters I used to airdrop on him;
"…characters come out, your haunts and geography." The 33 poems in this
collection are about people and places that anchored my world.

One dozen short love poems based on the idea that observation is one of the primary tells of the heart. When you love someone, you
pay attention to them. You see things that other people might not.
These were an experiment in short poems that display love rather
than talking about it, by calling up an image of things noticed.

My first published work, 1992. The structure of the book is an autobiographical narrative in four movements, corresponding
to the four major epochs of civilization as I have experienced them:
Tribal Nomadic Hunter-Gatherer, Sedentary Agrarian, Iron Age/Industrial
Revolution & the Information Age.

I'm pretty sure this is the only actual fiction piece I've ever
written which survives. The whole thing is a total fabrication except
for the "records on ribs" which I read about somewhere. I saved the story primarily for
the Musée des X-rays, which I really wish were a real place…

I could have titled this Turning a Prophet, had the whole experience
not been so costly. Paid to be a personal savior & messiah, I
thought I had it made. Simple drama devolves into enlightenment film
noir.

Essays

I was asked to write an essay about "sex, Rock 'n Roll and art" for the exhibition catalog of Sextablos: Works on Metal
and I had a ball with it. If you are easily offended by strong language
you might want to skip this one. If not, read it out loud at the top of
your lungs... Preach it. It sounds really great that way!

I'm best known as an artist and designer. Relaxing makes me tense, so I tend to put in a lot of hours on diverse projects.

Before becoming a visual artist, I spent 15 years as a poet. I studied poetry at Interlochen Arts Academy, Naropa, Stone Circle and on the streets. I performed my work for years at Stone Circle, solo shows, poetry readings, and at Lollapalooza in 1996.

I still write poems, but only if I can make them fit the constraints ofTwitter.